1. Lecture 2 Universals: realism
Dr. Donnchadh O’Conaill )
26/1/2017
Metaphysics University of Helsinki

2. 1. Introduction: explaining similarity
Similarity or attribute agreement: different objects characterised by the same terms
London buses, apples, wine all red
Trout, pike and perch are all fish
Many of these similarities are objective – things count as similar because of how they are, not how we regard them
This is a pre-philosophical truism: issue is to account for it
i.e., how must the world be for this truism to hold?

3. “Realists claim that where objects are similar or agree in attribute, there is some one thing that they share or have in common; nominalists deny this” (Loux, 20)
Consider all the things we call ‘just’: “They must all, in some sense, partake of a common nature, which will be found in whatever is just and in nothing else” – i.e., justice (Russell, 52)
What kind of entity is this ‘common nature’? How can it explain the similarity of objects?

4. 2. The ontology of realism
Realist: distinguish two categories of entities, particulars and universals
Particulars: e.g., ordinary objects (tables), scientifically posited entities (atoms)
Can only exist at one spatial location at any one time
Universals: repeatable entities
“At any given time, numerically one and the same universal can be […] exemplified by several different spatiotemporally discontinuous particulars” (Loux 23)

5. Different types of universal
Monadic: exemplified individually by different particulars (each apple is red)
Polyadic: exemplified together by different particulars (this apple is next to that one – both apples exemplify the universal being next to)
Different degrees of generality:
Apple more determinate universal than fruit, in that necessarily fewer things exemplify it
Universals can exemplify further universals: purple is darker than orange

6. 3. Explaining attribute agreement
Take the sentence (1) This apple is red
The phrase ‘this apple’ functions to pick out an entity – if it didn’t, the sentence couldn’t be true
Realist: the term ‘red’ also picks out an entity
“if (1) is to be true, both its subject term and its predicate term must have a referent” (Loux 26)
Referents of each term must be unified (the ‘is’ expresses this unification)

7. ‘Red’ is a general term, can apply to a variety of particulars: (2) That apple is red
Whatever referential force ‘red’ has in (1), it has the same force in (2)
Realist: ‘red’ picks out the same entity in each case, something shared by both apples
To be the same in each case, this entity must be repeatable, i.e., a universal
Same story for relations:
(3) The cup is on the saucer
(4) The book is on the table

8. Any entity which satisfies the attribute ’red’ belongs to the class of red things
What explains this? Is it that we decide to group certain things together and call them ’red’? Or is this fact brute, i.e., has no explanation?
Realist: No! We call ’red’ those things which share a certain property, redness
”it is natural to put the property first and the class second” (Armstrong 1989, 28)

9. 4. Explaining abstract reference
Abstract singular terms: ‘wisdom’, ‘redness’ ‘triangularity’
Subject terms: (5) Wisdom is a virtue (vs predicates, e.g., (6) Mari is wise)
Realist: these terms name universals
If universals do not exist, how could (5) be true? It is not about any wise person, or even all the wise people (since they are not ‘a virtue’)
Will return to this argument next week…

10. 5. Vicious regresses?
“where a number of objects agree in all being F, their agreement is grounded in their multiple exemplification of the universal F- ness” (Loux, 36)
What about exemplification? Isn’t this a relation between the particulars and F-ness?
To explain how the particulars stand in this relation, we have to appeal to another universal:
i.e., the particulars each stand in the relation exemplifying-F-ness to the universal F-ness
And this problem will keep recurring

11. “A strategy gives rise to a vicious regress if whatever problem it was designed to solve remains as much in need of the same treatment after its use as before” (Blackburn 2005, 313)
One response: this regress not vicious – the initial problem concerned a being F, not all predication (Loux, 40-41)
But realist argument in section 3 concerned any predication
Explaining any predication by appeal to exemplification creates another problem of the same kind

12. Realist: exemplification not a relation – a “non-relational tie” (Strawson 1959, 167)
Armstrong: the tie “is nothing but the bringing together of particulars and universals in states of affairs” (1989, 110), e.g., the apple’s being red
The apple and the universal redness each belong to this state of affairs, but their so belonging is not itself a further relation between them
Is this an ad hoc response?

13. 6. Predicates and properties
Do all predicates express a property?
E.g., ‘game’ – plausibly, nothing which all and only games have in common: “there will not be any property that runs through the whole class and makes them all games” (Armstrong 1989, 86)
One response: not all predicates express properties – only the predicates which feature in certain sciences will do so
Undermines arguments in sections 3 and 4?

14. 7. Platonism and Aristotelianism
Can unexemplified universals exist?
Platonists: yes – e.g., redness existed before there were any red particulars
Aristotelians: no – “if everything were white, the colour black would not exist” (Loux 48)
Vs Platonism: how are universals outside space and time connected to particulars?
How can we have knowledge of them? No causal relation to non-exemplified universals

15. Arguments for Platonism
(i) what about false attribution?
(7) Mari is a witch – what is claimed doesn’t differ depending on whether it is true or false
There are no witches, but there must be an entity which the term ‘witch’ picks out for (7) to assert anything (Loux, 49)
(ii) Universals explain the way particulars are: so particulars depend on them, not vice-versa
Universals connected to particulars by exemplification: this a primitive notion

16. Next week: nominalism…

17. Works cited
Armstrong, D. M. (1989) Universals: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder: Westview.
Blackburn, S. (2005) ‘Regress’ in The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (second edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russell, B. (1912) ‘The World of Universals’ in The Problems of Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Strawson, P. F. (1959) Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen